This invention relates to an expandable/collapsible roller assembly and more particularly to a collapsible take up roller assembly for use in continuous roll towel cabinets.
In the continuous roll towel industry a roll of clean towel material is placed in a cabinet, fed through a dispensing mechanism so as to present a clean portion of toweling to a user, and the soiled toweling taken up on a take up roll for subsequent laundering or other processing. When the entire roll of clean toweling has been used and wound up on the soiled towel take up roll the soiled toweling must be removed and taken to a laundry for cleaning. As the soiled toweling is wound up on the take up roll it increasingly tightens itself about the roll portion so that it is frequently very difficult to slip or slide the roll of soiled toweling off the take up roll to remove the toweling for laundering.
Various expandable/collapsible reels, sleeves and spindles have been proposed for solving particular problems in the slit steel, wire and other industries but they have all been complicated and expensive mechanisms and totally unsuitable for the roll towel industry.
Accordingly it is an object of the present invention to provide a collapsible roller assembly that overcomes the disadvantages of the prior art.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a simple, economical yet rugged collapsible take up roller for a roll towel cabinet.
It is yet another object of the present invention to provide a collapsible take up roller assembly that can be substituted for conventional take up rollers in continuous roll towel devices without requiring changes in the existing roll towel devices.
It is a still further object of the present invention to provide a collapsible take up roller assembly that can be made of economical water and corrosion resistant materials.
These and other and further objects of the present invention are obtained in one embodiment in which three outer roll segments are maintained in a collapsed condition by three elastic o-rings and expanded to operative position by axial insertion of a pair of spindle members, having at least one truncated cone caming member mounted thereon, adapted to mount the take up roller assembly in a conventional roll towel cabinet